Center for Health Disparities, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University , Greenville, NC , USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University , Greenville, NC , USA.
Front Public Health. 2014 Dec 22;2:282. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2014.00282. eCollection 2014.
To conduct meaningful, epidemiologic research on racial-ethnic health disparities, racial-ethnic samples must be rendered equivalent on other social status and contextual variables via statistical controls of those extraneous factors. The racial-ethnic groups must also be equally familiar with and have similar responses to the methods and measures used to collect health data, must have equal opportunity to participate in the research, and must be equally representative of their respective populations. In the absence of such measurement equivalence, studies of racial-ethnic health disparities are confounded by a plethora of unmeasured, uncontrolled correlates of race-ethnicity. Those correlates render the samples, methods, and measures incomparable across racial-ethnic groups, and diminish the ability to attribute health differences discovered to race-ethnicity vs. to its correlates. This paper reviews the non-equivalent yet normative samples, methodologies and measures used in epidemiologic studies of racial-ethnic health disparities, and provides concrete suggestions for improving sample, method, and scalar measurement equivalence.
要对种族-民族健康差异进行有意义的流行病学研究，就必须通过对这些无关因素的统计控制，使种族-民族样本在其他社会地位和背景变量上具有同等地位。种族-民族群体也必须对收集健康数据所使用的方法和措施同样熟悉，并作出类似的反应，必须有平等的机会参与研究，并且必须在各自的人群中具有同等的代表性。如果没有这种测量等效性，那么对种族-民族健康差异的研究就会受到大量未测量的、不受控制的种族-民族相关因素的干扰。这些相关因素使得样本、方法和措施在种族-民族群体之间无法比较，并降低了将发现的健康差异归因于种族-民族与归因于其相关因素的能力。本文回顾了种族-民族健康差异的流行病学研究中使用的非等效但规范的样本、方法和措施，并为提高样本、方法和标度测量等效性提供了具体建议。
